


lightning before the thunder

by advictorem



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/F, Transgender, Young Love, pre camp times, thaliabeth, trans!thalia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 04:05:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12856374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/advictorem/pseuds/advictorem
Summary: Thaliabeth drabble. Trans!Thalia.





	lightning before the thunder

**Author's Note:**

> Contains a headcanon I saw, about Thalia being the one to teach little Annabeth to cuss but blaming Luke. It was posted by fanfiction4geeks on Tumblr.

The first time Thalia shocked her, it was painful.

Sparks had danced off her fingertips, and spiraled around Annabeth’s forearm.

“Gods!” Thalia had cried in surprise, her eyes wide in fear.

She hadn’t been wearing a shirt, and seven year old Annabeth had seen every inch of young muscle. Thalia was flat-chested, no trace of any breast development. She looked just like Luke did the times Annabeth had seen him without a shirt, except her skin was remarkably darker than Luke’s and bore harsher scars.

“What are you doing in here?” Thalia had snarled, nastily yanking her up by the arms. Annabeth was tiny and it was easy for her to be lifted to Thalia’s eye level. “Didn’t I tell you to _stay out_?”

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Annabeth struggled, feeling the older girl’s fingertips sear her arms. “Please, I didn’t know—”

“Didn’t know what?” Thalia shouted. “That I’m a boy?”

Then the sparks danced, and Thalia’s eyes flashed, and Annabeth cried, and it was then that Thalia realized what she had done.

She released Annabeth like a breath of air—swiftly, all at once. But she didn’t apologize. Thalia didn’t do apologies.

“You—you’re not a boy,” were the only words that tumbled off her tongue.

Thalia tightened her jaw. “Leave me alone.”

“Thalia—”

“Go.”

Annabeth ran. She didn’t stop until she collided into Luke.

“Whoa!” he laughed, surprised. “Slow down there. Whatcha scared of?”

Before she could formulate any words that weren’t startled gasps, Thalia trudged out of their makeshift shelter with a scowl as mean as Hades.

Thalia, true to her nature, immediately stormed away from her companions. She didn’t appear again until hours later, after Luke had finished heating leftovers for Annabeth to gobble down.

Thalia didn’t speak to her. Didn’t look at her, in fact. It hurt Annabeth’s heart, for reasons she couldn’t properly understand.

“I’m going to bed,” the daughter of Zeus spat, and retreated into their shelter.

Luke simply shook his head, scooping beans into an old plastic bowl. He handed it slowly over to Annabeth, knowing how messy the little girl was.

“My fault,” Annabeth muttered. She stuffed her mouth. Her cheeks overfilled, she managed to look like the saddest and most pathetic kid Luke had ever seen.

Luke smiled. “Not your fault, kiddo. Thalia just gets like this sometimes. She just needs some space.”

Annabeth liked Luke. He was clever and kind. He always shoplifted her whatever she wanted. His smile lines only showed when he _really_ meant it. He was so genuine. Annabeth felt safe with them.

“My fault,” Annabeth repeated, swallowing about 97 pounds of beans. “I didn’t listen when she told me to stay out.”

Understanding began to twinkle behind Luke’s pale blue eyes. He nodded methodically, obviously contemplating his next words. “Thalia is a private person. You saw something she didn’t want you to see?”

Annabeth nodded.

“And you have questions?”

“Not really,” she answered, sounding a bit frustrated. Why was he trying to skirt around the main issue here? Thalia hated her!

“Annabeth, do you know what transgendered means?”

Her little brain started to work the way it always did whenever she was quizzed on vocabulary.

She remembered her prefixes.

 _Trans._ It meant _across, through, or beyond._

Gender.

“A change of gender?” Annabeth guessed.

Luke shrugged, accepting the answer. “Thalia is transgender.”

“She’s a girl,” Annabeth stated simply.

“Yes.”

“So…she used to be a boy?”

“You’re quick to catch on,” he noted. “I think Thalia has always been a girl. She just didn’t identify as one.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?”

“Annabeth…” Luke put his bowl down. “That’s not something that’s easy to tell people. A lot of people treat her differently because of it.”

“Differently?” Annabeth echoed. “Mean?”

Luke looked like he didn’t want to but he nodded. “Mean,” he affirmed, finally taking another bite of his food. “I don’t think we should talk about it anymore. If Thalia wants to, she’ll tell you.”

Annabeth had tons of questions— _was her mom mean to her about it and that’s why she ran away? Were there other people like her? They should rescue them from the mean people! Why was Thalia mad at Annabeth? It’s not like Annabeth didn’t completely think Thalia was the coolest girl she ever met—she could zap monsters to dust and she could kick so high and the wind always tossed her hair like she was a model at a photo shoot or a hero saving the day in one of Annabeth’s favorite history documentaries, or—_

Annabeth stuffed the rest of the beans into her mouth, feeling her cheeks get red.

Thalia was like a hero. She was like Heracles, but probably even _better_ than Heracles because she was a girl and she could run super fast and she had the brightest eyes and the purest soul and the toughest scowl that scared monsters off to their monster mamas, and her freckles looked like rain clouds on her cheeks that scattered droplets across her nose—

“Time to go to bed, kiddo,” Luke murmured, looking up at the setting sun.

Annabeth pouted. Bed time meant going back to the tent. And going back to the tent meant sharing a sleeping bag with Thalia, who more than likely hated her now. Annabeth couldn’t forget the way she felt—the electricity scorching the skin of her arms as Thalia’s eyes flared in unrestrained anger. It made her eyes tear up again just remembering. She was sad that she had upset Thalia.

“She’s not going to bite,” Luke assured her softly. “You just…you just need to let her know that nothing’s changed.”

Annabeth wasn’t sure how to respond to his advice for once. Usually, she would just ask question after question, or supply better advice of her own. She just nodded this time, sulking off to the cold tent.

It was darkening, but she could still make out Thalia’s face. Even though her eyes were closed, her expression hinted that she was still awake—her freckle-splattered nose was slightly scrunched with an emotion Annabeth couldn’t discern, her sharp jaw tightened past its breaking point.

She slid into the bag slowly and unsurely, feeling Thalia’s tall body stiffen. She faced her, burying her face into Thalia’s chest like she did every night. Her little bones shivered as she melted into the other girl’s warmth.

She felt her eyes droop, but she tried desperately to stay awake, wanting to say something—anything—to stop Thalia from hating her.

Several long moments passed—filled with awkward silence, Thalia’s tense breaths, and Annabeth’s shivers—before Annabeth felt the comfort of a dark, muscled arm pulling her close.

Annabeth struggled to apologize, foolishly hoping the right words would come tumbling forth. The best she could muster was: “You’re my family.”

Annabeth accepted the distant rumbling thunder as Thalia’s agreement.

* * *

“Hurry up, kid.”

Annabeth pouted from her giant bathtub—a small riverbed that they had discovered just a little ways past Virginia. She dragged her rubber ducky across the surface of the shallow bed. It was a funny looking toy—Luke had found it in a gas station. It had a lopsided cowboy hat and it was polka-dotted, but Annabeth loved the hideous thing.

“You have three seconds to start washing your hair, or I swear to Zeus, I’m gonna shave it all off,” Thalia threatened.

If Annabeth couldn’t see past her tough act and spot the compassion lying almost dormant underneath, she might’ve been scared. She giggled, splashing at Thalia as she tried to get closer. She knew Thalia was weird about coming into bodies of water—Poseidon didn’t really like the children of his brothers, Annabeth knew.

“Come and get me!”

Annabeth miscalculated.

Thalia’s arms were just long enough to catch her before she could swim away. She shrieked, nearly losing her rubber ducky to the river as Thalia pulled her closer to the shore. Thalia squirted a glob of lemon-scented shampoo into her hands, which were probably larger than Annabeth’s face, and began to softly wash her blond ringlets, working out some of the tangles with her nimble fingers.

Annabeth _decided_ to behave because as strong as Thalia was, the daughter of Athena was quick and crafty enough to get away. If she wanted to get away, but she didn’t.

“Dip your head back.”

After Thalia manipulated the air to get her relatively dry—she was so cool!—she handed Annabeth her clothes and gave her privacy by simply turning around and scanning the perimeter.

She pulled the stolen Scooby-Doo shirt over her head and smoothed it down, and then slipped into her sweatpants. The clothes were a tad too big but they kept her warm.

“You can turn around now,” Annabeth taunted.

Thalia looked over her shoulder with a smirk. “C’mon, kid. We need to help Luke pack everything up. We need to get a move on if we want to make it to D.C. by your bed time.”

Annabeth scrunched her nose at the mention of her bed time. “Sure. If you can catch me.”

She didn’t know why she bothered running off, knowing that Thalia was older and stronger and her arms were like pythons, constricting around her small body and tossing her into the air with a smug laugh.

Annabeth rode on Thalia’s shoulders all the way back to the campsite, and Luke greeted them with a silly smile and wave.

His pale blue eyes twinkled gleefully. “I was beginning to think you drowned.”

The statement was directed at Thalia.

“It’s gonna take more than bath time to kill me.”

“Like…a…” Annabeth pretended to think. “HYDRA?”

She slipped from Thalia’s tall shoulders with a loud roar, managing to stomp on both of her friends’ feet.

“You’ve never even met a hydra,” Luke accused. “They sound more like this.”

The sound that came out was the funniest noise Annabeth had ever heard—somewhere between a hiss and Jar Jar Binks.

He swooped Annabeth up in his arms, despite her frantic screaming, and toted her over to the fire.

“And their venom melts your bones!”

Annabeth screamed louder, trying not to burst out in laughter, trusting Luke with her life as he lowered her closer to the flames. She felt the heat lick her arms.

“Fuck sake, Luke!” Thalia’s angry voice cut in. “Put her down. Now!”

Luke’s eyes went wide but he smartly dropped Annabeth safely on the ground. “Thalia—did you just—”

“Annie, go get your things,” Thalia ordered, storming up to Luke and shoving his chest to emphasize her point. “The last thing we need, Robin Hood, is for you to go around giving her nightmares.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Shut up.”

Annabeth smiled when she heard their laughter. Thalia said some colorful words and Annabeth didn’t know what most of them meant, but they always seemed to make Luke laugh.

They were so much more than Annabeth felt she deserved.

* * *

“Holy fucking shit!”

Thalia choked. Her eyes sparked with lightning. “Luke, did you teach her how to cuss? Watch your fucking mouth, Luke.”

“Do you not hear yourself?” he yelled back.

Annabeth tugged on the sleeve of Thalia’s shirt. “Not the time!” she reminded. She pointed to the creature charging at them, wearing a posterboard that read _2 for $1 chili cheese helldogs!_

She assumed mortals read that as _hotdogs_.

Thalia unsheathed her spear, spinning it expertly. She slashed and hacked at the hellhound, easily avoiding is lunges. Luke hurriedly produced his golf club and tried to get in between Thalia and the beast. Mortals around them gasped in shock, a couple of them even bothering to dial 911.

Annabeth got her dagger out and ran up when the hellhound swatted Luke to the side. Thalia nearly lost her balance and slipped trying to dodge flying claws.

“Hey, Lassie!”

It seemed funny at the time.

Annabeth plunged her dagger into his front paw, nearly falling backwards when he howled in pain.

Her attack had bought Thalia the time she needed. The brave daughter of Zeus jumped nimbly onto the hellhound’s back and wrapped her arms around his throat, squeezing and gesturing wildly with her head to Annabeth, who got the hint. Annabeth yanked the dagger out of his paw and tossed it, watching as it spiraled into Thalia’s hand.

“Down, boy,” Thalia quipped angrily, splitting his throat open.

Before any blood dripped to the ground, the hellhound erupted into yellow powder.

“C’mon,” Luke said, wiping the sweat from his lip. “The cops are coming. We have to get out of here!”

“Oh shit!”

Thalia clamped her hand over Annabeth’s mouth, lifting her into her strong arms and running at the speed of lightning.

Maybe the colorful words didn’t have the same effect as when Thalia said them, but Annabeth still thought it was pretty funny.

* * *

Annabeth sobbed, fists clenching around dewy grass shards.

“Annabeth!” Luke yelled, tugging her up from the ground.

She fought him wildly, thrashing her little limbs, tears streaming down her cheeks as she watched Thalia fend off an army.

“Thalia!”

“Go!” Thalia screamed at her, and it took Annabeth back to months before—feeling lightning sear the hair from her arms as the daughter of Zeus hefted her into the air. “Damn it, Annabeth, go with Luke!”

“NO!”

“Annabeth,” Grover warned, watching anxiously as the winds around them grew stronger, branches flapping in their trees. “She’ll be fine. We need to get to camp!”

Something in Luke’s eyes told Annabeth that Thalia wasn’t going to be okay, no matter what stupid lies Goat Boy told them. Thalia was the strongest person Annabeth knew, but even she wouldn’t be able to kill hundreds of monsters. She had already summoned enough lightning to put herself into a coma.

Annabeth couldn’t let this be Thalia’s last stand. They were _family_. Thalia wouldn’t have left her behind. Thalia would have fought, kicked Luke in his shins, ripped Grover’s horns off, and barreled down the hill like an angry boar, rescuing Annabeth in a slew of blood, monster dust, and glory.

She wrestled out of Luke’s grip, ignoring his frantic shouts, and took off towards her friend.

Thalia caught sight of her before she could get into the fray, and shouted, extending an arm and clenching her fist slowly.

It happened all at once. One moment, Annabeth was ten seconds away from her, and the next, a great gust of wind had blown her little body back across the hill, knocking her to the camp ground and pushing the three of them to safety.

Thalia.

Thalia had done that.

The last thing Annabeth saw before she blacked out was a rapidly blooming tree, branches stretching like shooting stars.

She made a wish on the shooting stars no one else could see.

_I wish I could save Thalia._

* * *

It was another six years before her wish came to fruition, but Annabeth hadn’t forgotten it. She thought about Thalia every day, and she joined her tree every night, before bedtime, to tell her about her day at camp. Luke had thought she was crazy for doing it, which felt like yet another betrayal. Annabeth felt her heart sink lower. What would Thalia think if she were here?

If she were here, Luke would have never betrayed the gods in the first place.

Annabeth didn’t know if that was exactly true, the Fates were unpredictable, but she reasoned that if anyone could have reached out to Luke, it would have been his best friend. Thalia and Luke had a relationship that Annabeth couldn’t begin to grasp. She was envious of it. She wanted to be Thalia’s best friend. She wanted Thalia to be more to her than her protector.

It was storming rather violently outside of the camp boundaries. Storms had scared her before she met Thalia and Luke. Thalia had taught her that storms were nothing to fear—they could bring more good than they could bad. It also helped that Thalia could control them to some extent, of course. She wondered if Zeus was pleased with the camp—if he was happy that she and Percy had saved his daughter.

Annabeth reclined on her back, looking up to the twinkling sky, catching easy sight of the Golden Fleece, glimmering and swaying in the trees. She had volunteered to take first patrol that night, alongside the dutiful dragon Peleus, but she honestly only offered so she could tell Thalia of her quest.

“You’d never believe it,” Annabeth said, shaking her head. “Percy brought his cyclops brother with us. And, I know what you’re going to say. I was extremely cautious because, as you know, I don’t have the best reputation with cyclopes. Well, none of us do, really. But Tyson is…different. He’s sweet.”

As she laughed at her own ridiculous self, she could practically hear Thalia, cussing up a storm about how she could have gotten herself hurt, and—

Was that a snore?

“Who’s there?”

Her celestial bronze dagger was already pulled.

Her gray eyes blinked quickly, scanning the road that led to camp. She didn’t sense a monster nearby or…

Someone fell against her shoulder.

Annabeth jolted, twisting her body away, causing the person to fall to the ground. A messy head of black hair, effortlessly spiked, dark freckled skin, defined jaw, sharp nose, lips carved out of a Greek statue—

“Thalia.”

Annabeth choked.

“Oh my gods! Thalia! THALIA!”

She shook at Thalia’s shoulder desperately, perhaps a bit too harsh, and she didn’t stop until Thalia’s eyes fluttered open. Dark blue, like the sky at night, and she swore she saw sparks twinkling in them. And then her eyes were closed again.

Sparks. Thalia was alive! Alive!

Annabeth searched frantically for some of the perimeter patrollers. There were usually a couple of volunteers to onlook in case Annabeth came into some trouble.

She blinked away the tears she hadn’t stopped to notice, but it was far too late. They streamed down her face and collected on the base of her chin and jaw.

“Pollux!”

He ran to her, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Annabeth. What’s wrong—? Holy Hera, is that—”

“Go!” she yelled. “Get Chiron, hurry! She needs help!”

He took off. It was the fastest she had ever seen him run.

Annabeth cradled Thalia’s head in her lap, using her fingers to knock away the stray black hairs from her face. “It’s going to be okay. You’re safe now, Thalia. You…I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

* * *

Annabeth had grown up to be formidable in both battle and social interactions—she never revealed her weaknesses, but she was wise enough to admit, if only to herself, she had them.

Her current disabling weakness? Thalia’s wicked smile as she met her eyes across their shared biology class. Throw in her newly-dyed blue streaks of hair? Annabeth was weak.

Annabeth wondered if Thalia noticed the way some of the other girls stared at her. She wasn’t sure what they were thinking, but she knew she didn’t like it one bit.

That was probably unlike her, but she had always been territorial—she felt like she didn’t have much in the world, so she tended to be a bit stingy with the things, and people, she _did_ have.

So, Annabeth _probably_ shouldn’t have punched Sierra Blake in the face, but Sierra Blake _definitely_ shouldn’t have called Thalia a freak.

And Annabeth didn’t care that her friend was beyond capable of fighting her own battles; she still punched Sierra in her face and she would do it over again if she had to.

“I could have stomped her into the concrete,” Thalia muttered, slightly flustered that Annabeth had acted quicker than her. “You didn’t have to get yourself in trouble like that.”

“Yes,” Annabeth replied easily, “I really did.”

That smirk was going to be the death of her. “Oh, Annabeth Chase, future valedictorian, what will your father think?”

“It does not matter what he’s going to think,” Annabeth revealed honestly. “I can just beat him up, too.”

Thalia laughed. She nodded, digging her hands into her leather jacket. “You probably can. He’s not exactly a big guy.”

Annabeth couldn’t help her smile. “C’mon, let’s get back to our dorm.”

“Why?” Thalia’s eyes sparkled. “So you can get scared in the middle of the night, and sneak into my bed?”

It was the first time Thalia had openly called her out on it.

Annabeth’s cheeks were red. “I just do that because—I…I miss the old days sometimes.” It was hardly a mutter. She hadn’t even meant to explain herself, but once she started it was impossible to stop. “When we would share a sleeping bag, and you would keep watch, and we’d wake up to Luke heating up a can of ravioli—”

She choked on her words and as always, Thalia was there to save her.

Her arms were comforting and she smelled like a mixture of pine and smoke. It probably shouldn’t have smelled so enticing to Annabeth, but it did.

Thalia’s smile wasn’t full and bright, but it was a smile, and that was hard enough to get out of her. “Hey,” she said softly, tucking a lock of curly blond hair behind her ear. “I’m still here. We can share a bed, and I can keep watch, and I can kill all the spiders, and we can cook our own food in the mornings, and we can run away right now, just say the word and—”

Annabeth silenced her with a tight hug, pulling her in with all of her might and clinging to her like they were facing another Cyclops together.

“You’re my family,” she mumbled against Thalia’s chest for a second time, like she did all those years ago when she was just a little girl, afraid that her protector, her best friend, hated her.

She heard the same, soothing thunder shake the skies, tightening her hold when Thalia bent lower to bury her face in her hair.

"And I love you."

It tumbled out before she realized it. Why couldn't she shut up?

"You're beautiful, and my hero, and I've always felt really strongly about you, and I can't help it, and I've tried, but I feel like a piece of me is missing when you aren't near. When you turned into a tree, when you died, when you were taken away from me for all those years, you're all I thought about. I would visit you every single day because I couldn't bear not to. You complete me, and I—"

Annabeth doesn't have the courage or the mental ability to finish the rest of her babble.

Part of her expects Thalia to shove her away and electrocute her, or dismiss her with a scoff or something equally as rude, but she doesn't do either. She reluctantly looks up, meeting Thalia's imploring, unusually watery blue eyes—they almost looked like little rain clouds—and before she can take it back, before she can apologize, Thalia's lips descend upon hers and she tastes every candy she's ever loved; she feels sparks jump the surface of her skin, slipping between their now intertwined fingers—and, this time, the shocks don't hurt. They're all light and tingly, and they just make Annabeth want to kiss her deeper and shove her against the lockers.

"I love you, too, Annabeth," Thalia muttered reverently whenever their kiss died out in a flush of lighter pecks. "I told you. I'm never leaving you again."

Annabeth couldn't help but hold onto that with everything she had. Admitting her feelings to Thalia had been so sudden and unlike her, and oh-so-impulsive, but it was worth it. Even if it meant they would be spending the next three days in detention because Mr. Henderson, their chemistry teacher, had caught them heatedly making out in the mostly empty hallway.

She looked down at her detention slip.

_Annabeth Chase, 8th Grade. Description of violation: P.D.A._

She had a feeling this was but one rule in a long list of them she was going to break with Thalia Grace.


End file.
